Whitney Rojas has a lot on her mind these days. She makes a modest salary working in a restaurant, is six months pregnant and just received a $600 water bill for her St. Pete rental home.
Somehow, the city insisted Rojas had managed to consume nearly 29,000 gallons of water in a month.
Rojas contacted 8 On Your Side for help and, within a day, no longer had to worry about that water bill even though the cause of it remains a mystery.
Rojas’ water troubles actually started back in April when her bill started climbing. The City of St. Petersburg came out and replaced her water meter and the line leading to her rental home’s property line. But the bill climbed in May, and by June it was out of control.
“There’s something going on, on the private side of the plumbing,” said Michael Renshaw, interim manager of water distribution for the City of St. Pete. It’s the kind of problem Renshaw deals with a lot. “We get these on pretty much a daily basis and we try to investigate every one of them.”
The day after 8 On Your Side started asking questions, Renshaw showed up with a full work crew to replace the water meter in front of Rojas’ rental home that had just been replaced three months ago and sent it to the city lab for testing—which it passed.
“This is the sort of thing that we always do for any of customers that have any of these issues like this,” said Bill Logan, spokesman for St. Pete’s Public Works Department.
Rojas’ landlord had also hired experts to check out the home’s plumbing on the private side of the water line.
“The plumber came out and leak detection came out. They detect hidden leaks and he couldn’t find anything either,” Rojas said.
She says there had been a running toilet for a time but that was fixed three weeks ago – about the time the $600 water bill floated in with the daily mail. Whatever the cause, it wasn’t in her budget to pay for the consequences.
“Not at all,” Rojas said. “Not even close.”
After 8 On Your Side got involved, the city took into account Rojas’ landlord’s effort to sleuth out the problem and forgave her entire $600 water bill. That was a big relief.
By the weekend, Rojas’ new meter had only registered 150 gallons of use – an even bigger respite for a young waitress of modest means with a baby on the way who’s just trying to get through the long hot summer.
